At Democracy Works, we believe voting should fit the way we live. To that end, we build technology for both voters and election administrators that simplifies the process and ensures that no voter should ever have to miss an election.

TurboVote, our first service, helps voters register, stay registered, and cast a ballot in every election, from municipal to national. TurboVote signed up its millionth voter in 2016 by building the largest college and corporate coalition in the country, including 194 campuses, companies like Starbucks, Univision, Facebook, Google, Snapchat, and dozens more. We also helped (basically) everyone find their polling place through the Voting Information Project. Its data had 123 million impressions in 2016, and over 11 million voters looked up where to vote on GetToThePolls.com. To scale our impact and reach every voter, we’re establishing an Election Technology Cooperative to provide affordable, voter-centered technology to election administrators. And Ballot Scout helps election administrators track absentee ballots through the mail, providing transparency in the vote-by-mail process and making it easier to follow up when things go awry.

Streamlining democracy requires quite a bit of knowledge: what form you use to register to vote in Wyoming, to whom you mail your absentee ballot application in Maine, and whether there’s an election taking place in Virginia RIGHT NOW. (There is!) We’re seeking a researcher to help us know as much as possible about elections, and use that knowledge to inform our software design, operations, and customer service for more than 1 million voters across 50 states.

You’ll:

Learn the ins-and-outs of election rules across 50 states, and apply that big-picture understanding to the smallest details of how we serve individual voters

Track when every election is happening, using your wits, charm, and deft Google Alert-wrangling skills (plus the occasional temp staffer)

Solve problems, answer questions, and ensure that even our most confused voter gets the information they need

Break things, hunt bugs, and help prioritize new features for our developer team

You are:

(Almost frighteningly) inquisitive

Exceptionally organized, able to prioritize multiple projects simultaneously, and detail-oriented

Wrangling data or dabbling in Excel formulas/Python/Ruby/R (that left you eager to learn more)

To apply, send a resume and brief, informal introduction to Magda and Katy at work@democracy.works with the subject “Will research for democracy.” From there, we’ll send you a short practical exercise designed to test some of your problem-solving skills, which we’ll anonymize and then evaluate in a blind review. Candidates with strong responses to the practical exercise will go through interview rounds (up to three) with different members of our team who interact closely with this position. We’ll ask for references from our top finalist(s), then make an offer.

Democracy Works is committed to diversity and inclusion in everything we do and aspires to have a team that's representative of the voters we serve. When hiring, we practice proactive outreach to top talent that’s underrepresented in our sector (including Latino, Black, AAPI, and Indigenous candidates). We conduct an anonymized skills evaluation, to reduce implicit bias and resume-dependency in our process. We're a woman- and gay-founded startup, and promote an inclusive culture that stands against racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism (to name a few). To be explicit, we strongly encourage applicants of all races, ethnicities, political party associations, religions (or lack thereof), national origins, sexual orientations, genders, sexes, ages, abilities, and branches of military service. Feel free to contact work@democracy.works if you have any questions about our commitment to inclusion or about general hiring practices. Democracy Works posts all current career opportunities at democracy.works/careers.